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Sunday, February 1, 2015

Joan Garfield and Elizabeth
Fry: poster-session superstars. They shared their poster about
assessments developed under the NSF e-ATLAS grant.

Two Catalysts
for Change, Joan Garfield and Elizabeth Fry, kicked off the New Year
with a trip to San Antonio, Texas for the Joint Math Meetings. They
arrived before the meetings began, in order to attend a workshop led by
Allan Rossman, Robin Lock, and colleagues to learn about their
approaches to teaching simulation and randomization-based methods in
introductory statistics courses.

Elizabeth Fry presenting her
paper and work on the Statistics Teaching Inventory developed under the
NSF e-ATLAS grant, and solidifying her case as the next TedTalk rising
star.

The fun did not stop there. On January 10, Liz presented a contributed paper, What do we know about best practices in teaching the introductory course? This
presentation showcased the work that has been done on the Statistics
Teaching Inventory, a national survey of statistics instructors,
developed under the NSF e-ATLAS grant. The following day, Joan and Liz
participated in a special poster session for NSF-funded projects, where
they shared more about the assessments developed under the e-ATLAS
project.

In addition to bringing
statistics education research and expertise, Elizabeth Fry and Joan
Garfield brought a little midwestern winter to San Antonio.
Temperatures were a tad chillier than expected for local residents.

Beautiful elements along the
San Antonio River Walk, providing the rare sight for Minnesotans of an
unfrozen body of water in winter.

Despite
record cold temperatures for San Antonio (which felt balmy compared to
temperatures in Minnesota), Liz and Joan spent plenty of time outside
walking around, exploring the Riverwalk, and taking advantage of some of
the finest dining that the city has to offer. They particularly enjoyed
excellent food and company one evening at Citrus restaurant together
with John Holcomb and Nick Horton.

Joan Garfield, Elizabeth Fry,
John Holcomb, and Nick Horton taking time to replenish at Citrus
restaurant. It is ill-advised to talk about statistics without
sufficient food and beverage.